Heterarchical Inscriptions and Sacred Space at John the Baptist Shrines in Damascus (Syria) and Oujda (Morocco)

This article investigates vernacular graffiti at shrines dedicated to Yaḥyā (John the Baptist) in the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus and the Sidi Yaḥyā sanctuary in Oujda, Morocco. The study compares textual forms, devotional genres, and the manifestation of public sacredness. Photographic corpora from 2009 in Damascus, comprising thirty-seven inscriptions, and from 2017 in Oujda, with about forty-five markings, serve as the primary sources. The methodology integrates sociotextual analysis of Arabic invocations with visual and spatial examination of motifs, media, and placement. The central argument posits that these informal marks—whether written invocations, carved diagrams, or protective signs—constitute heterarchical inscriptions. Such inscriptions incorporate unranked, vernacular practices that reconfigure sacred space beyond institutional authority. Their persistence demonstrates the limitations of heritage-regulatory interventions at both sites. In Damascus, hand-height invocations and kinship-chain prayers near the maqām render devotion visible as public speech and as a claim to belonging during periods of displacement. In Oujda, geometric signs at thresholds, soot-marked carvings, and an incised mancala game board function as protective devices on liminal surfaces, extending Yaḥyā’s baraka through diagrammatic inscription. Shrine graffiti thus emerges as an accretive medium, with accumulated marks incrementally constructing, producing, and contesting sacred space in North Africa and the Levant.